...on the edge of this corner of southwestern North Dakota, and on the edge as a mom and a pastor...

December 2013

12/27/2013

My beloved 8-year old has grown fond of ice skating. Public skating at the local ice rink has become one of the few activities that will encourage him out of our house and away from thousands of Legos that threaten to take over our home each day.

He is wobbly but somehow quick. And he manages to find someone he knows and shyly goes over to pay him or her a visit, bringing out that 8-year old smile that unveils a mouthful of oversized and undersized teeth.

Back when I was a couple of years older than him, my mom indulged me in ice skating lessons. Actually, it may have been her idea. Those details all run together now.
We lived two miles south of the Canadian border, too far north to be near an American ice skating rink. So to Canada we ventured. Maybe a couple of times a week, driving 18 miles north, over an international border, back when that was a simpler venture.
I remember the imitation M&M's that always called out to me from the concession stand. They were the Canadian version, and I can't remember what they were called. I remember only they were M&M wanna-be's, but I would enjoy them anyway.
But the truth of the matter is this, when a 10-year old decides to begin ice skating lessons in Canada, you can be sure your classmates will be 3-years old.
Beginning skaters north of the border are young. Much younger than a tall and lanky 10-year old.
But there I was, in the preschool skating class, enjoying myself much like little redhead skater whom I love today.

12/19/2013

I had just closed Barbara Brown Taylor's book Home By Another Way, after reading her sermon "Wherever the Way May Lead". She spoke about John the Baptist, describing him as the prophet whom God planted in the wilderness. People had to leave the comfort of Jerusalem and her temple to hear God's word of freedom, spoken by wild-haired and wild-fashioned John.

Then, I opened another book I have been reading and found something I had intended to use as a bookmark. Do you do that? When you need something to mark a page, you grab something nearby that would fit in a book and repurpose it as a bookmark?

This bookmark was just the thing to follow my reading of Taylor's take on John the Baptist, set out in the wilderness.

A few months ago at a strategic planning meeting for Badlands Ministries, the image of the wilderness came up. We were wrestling around with a mission statement. My friend, Steve Tangen, talked about the wilderness as a place where we go to find God. Biblically, the wilderness is the place where God's people go out to encounter God.

People had to go out of Jerusalem, into the wilderness, to hear a wild-haired prophet and experience God in a new way.

Back to my makeshift bookmark. It is an invitation from Camp Metigoshe near Bottineau, where I was a counselor for a couple of summers. Each year after Christmas, they have an event called the Nights of Christmas. My bookmark is their invitation. A postcard with an all-staff picture.

Do you know what many of the guys who are camp counselors look like in the summer? John the Baptist. There are beards, crazy hair, no leather belt around wastes, but hankerchief bandanas. It is like a John the Baptist impersonators convention, if you quickly scan the guys in the picture.

Well, maybe I'm mildly exaggerating. But there is something to say about the wildness and the freedom of God's grace that explodes at camp. Surely itis part of the attraction. That kids and youth leave the comfort and familiarity of their congregations to encounter God in the wilderness.

The wild-haired, wild-fashioned kind of God, who is proclaimed around the campfire and witnessed at the Christ Hike. Seen as if for the first time. Barbara Brown Taylor put it this way "If we only listen for God in church, we will miss half of the message. The good news is always beginning somewhere in the world, for those with ears to hear and hearts to go wherever the way may lead."

12/16/2013

Back when I first gambled, I was probably around the age of five, just old enough to tie my own shoes. I hadn't fallen in with the wrong crowd, I had gone out to supper with my parents and grandparents.

The culprit? Two words. Well, three words, really: Grandpa. Pull-Tabs.

My Grandpa Lloyd loved loved loved the pull-tab machine at the Northern Lights Supper Club in Sherwood. The truth is, I kind of hated going out to supper because I was a picky eater and in those days, there was not macaroni and cheese on every single restaurant menu. So I would suffer through supper with my hot ham and cheese balls, which were really an appetizer, but luckily, my parents let that pass as a meal. Probably because I was a vicious pouter. (Don't ask Marcus about that residual childhood habit of mine.)

So in between my bites of hot ham and cheese balls and sips of Shirley Temple (or Roy Rogers, depending on who took the order), my grandpa would slide pull-tabs across the table to me. With a conspiring smile (I still think he could have passed for a mobster, or at least a Norwegian version of one), he would encourage me to open the stack of ten or so pull-tabs.

It could be that he let me keep some of the winnings, the few times that may have happened. I can't remember. I only remember when there was eating out, there were probably pull-tabs.

I've been wrestling a lot lately with the same uneasiness as most parents of kids, perhaps teenage and younger. The holy-cow-did-I-overdo-it-with-Christmas-gifts-again-this-year uneasiness. The I-really-don't-like-that-my-kids-have-so-much-stuff-and-I-just-bought-them-more uneasiness.

Their lives are so much different from mine growing up, which only makes sense because our culture today is totally different. (This is, of course, the same thing my own parents said when I was little, and their parents said when they were little.)

But "back in my day", there were supper clubs. They were aptly named because it was super-duper special to get to go out for supper. People would make plans in advance and then get really, really dressed up. They might even coax a little girl to gamble and give her a Shirley Temple.

My kids, however, have missed out on that kind of experience entirely. They have never been faced with a menu that lacked kid-friendly food. Going out to eat is routine, rather than an occassion.

And yet again, they are going to end up with more than they need after they unwrap their Christmas gifts. Life was much simpler back when I was a gambler. When there were supper clubs. And less macaroni and cheese in the world and more hot ham and cheese balls.

I'm pretty sure the moral of the story is not that I should buy a stack of pull-tabs for my kids for Christmas and take back their other stuff. Maybe in 30 years, I can ask them what they remember about growing up in an age of abundance.

12/13/2013

Memorizing stuff is not everyone's gig. I can recall painful nights trying to help a high school classmate memorize science terms before a test. He was smart, but memorizing did not agree with him.

For our ancestors of the faith, memorizing was their only hope of passing on the faith. The stories that are now written in a gazillion bibles around the world were passed down orally from generation to generation.

In my own denomination, memorizing Scripture is not a highly valued exercise. In fact, for better and for worse, my own denomination may be more suspicious than complimentary of people who memorize and spout out Scripture!

But I had an experience a month ago that reshaped how I feel about memorizing Scripture. I attended a retreat to be with colleagues, and to learn about a congregational-based organizing process called Transformation Ministry. The training was led by pastors who serve in their synods and are mostly from the Midwest.

One of the pastors was in his early 60's, I suppose, and has taken up the spiritual practice of memorizing Scripture. For him, it is what fills his mind when he runs. When he read the gospel during a worship service, he told a story from Luke's gospel from memory. Another time, he recited one of the morning canticles from memory. And I appreciated such a feasting on those words. Memorizing them requires patience and attentiveness.

One of our classes at seminary required us to memorize all of Luther's Small Catechism. Since then, I've continued to recite the responses to the Creed, and the meanings of the 10 Commandments, from memory as a means of devotion.

Since the retreat a month ago, I have spent extra time with Psalm 4, one of my favorites. Memorizing the words gave me an appreciation for the way the psalmist put them together thousands of years ago. Now I recognize how one verse moves into another, why one train of thought becomes another. Of all of the times I've read those words, which have carried me through some dark moments, I'd never felt as connected to them as I do now.

Last week, I rediscovered Psalm 63. The funny thing about psalms, and perhaps this pertains to all of Scripture, is that you can read the same thing over and over again, but until the Spirit nearly pokes you in the eye with it, the words are just words. Last week, when I read Psalm 63, those were the words I needed to hear. That God is my God. That among all of the things that promise to fulfill me, it is for the Lord that my soul thirsts. It is only the Lord that quenches my daily soul thirsting. I needed to hear in the words of that psalm that God's steadfast love is more important than life itself. That I am tucked into the shadow of God's wings. That I cling to God, and God holds me tight.

Dang, I love the psalms. Disclaimer: They can only be read through the lens of the cross, holding fast to the promise that Christ died to set us free from believing we have to depend on ourselves for salvation. That said, psalms provide language for the angst, joy, wonder, frustration, despair, relief of the faith.

What is your spiritual practice? In what way or place do you encounter this God who holds you tight?

12/03/2013

The frozen pizza aisle at the grocery store has multiplied like gremlins after midnight.

I noticed this phenomenon about a year ago. What was contained within about five freezers now occupies ten. (I'm making up the numbers, to try to sound scientific.) But regardless of the numbers, the selection of frozen pizzas is quite extensive in Dickinson frozen food sections.

It seems safe to describe frozen pizzas as a staple food for young, single men. And Dickinson has an inordinate number of young, single men. The truth is, Dickinson has an excess of young, single, wealthy men, who generate lucrative income in their demanding, oilfield jobs. They work in wicked conditions, endure brutal schedules, and many of them live in campers or hotel rooms. Most of them must live in places with access to an oven to cook their frozen pizzas.

Maybe a decade ago, a book called Bowling Alone came out. The premise implies no longer does our society bring people together for things such as bowling leagues. No longer do we regularly socialize through avenues such as Ladies Aid. Instead, we spend more time alone, indepedent, happy to be home when we can. Eating frozen pizzas, perhaps.

As I read Wendell Frerichs Real Prayers this morning, I found this notion resounded in his words. Compared to generations past, "...are we just more disillusioned about human help?"

I'm not saying there is anything wrong with eating frozen pizzas. Or spending time alone. I do, however, feel a bit sad if there are thousands (that number is accurate) of hard-working folks within ten miles of our community who are isolated in campers and hotel rooms with no one to bowl with, or socialize with in a healthy way that may shine Christ's light into the world. Men who are far from home, making an obscene amount of money, eating frozen pizzas.